Saturday, June 11, 2011

In London

As always international travel is an adventure. The trip started off super well with supper with Maryann at Famoso in Edmonton. Then, my flight was delayed by 50 minutes for some mysterious reason, but that was OK as Maryann and I got to hang out a little longer.

That's when things started to go downhill. As the departure time approached, a massive thunderstorm arrived in Edmonton. Lightening activity meant that all airline operations were stopped - bummer. Eventually we were allowed to board, but by this time it was even later.

Enter the next complication - the electrical storm had fried the plane's computer and a technician had to come get that fixed. Luckily, they didn't figure that out until we had boarded so we got to sit on the plane at the gate for a while sweet.

Finally, we pushed back from the gate and started to taxi to the runway. Enter complication numero deux - a fuel pump was now broken. So, again, we sat on the tarmac for a while and eventually Air Canada decided we should go back to the gate. We didn't get to leave the plane however, we just sat there while the fuel pump was fixed.

Once those two issues got worked out it was 1AM and our flight was 2.5 hours late. The sweet part about that is that it means that I missed my connection in London to head to Munich. That wasn't a big deal though, and I'm on a later flight.

So, for now I'm chilling in a Servisair lounge that has snacks, drinks, wifi, and a private bathroom - decent.

The plan is to sleep in Munich tonight and then meet up with Nathan and Roger tomorrow. That could be interesting as the current level of detail is to meet at the Munich Airport. Paul and I tried that once at the train station and it was interesting to say the least!